Supporters of Pakistan People’s Party celebrate the nomination of Asif Ali Zardari for presidential candidate in Multan September 1, 2008.

REUTERS/Asim Tanveer

GENEVA: A Swiss judge who investigated Asif Ali Zardari, a leading Pakistani politician and the widower of Benazir Bhutto, for alleged money laundering said Thursday he is disappointed the case has been dropped at the request of Pakistani authorities.

Daniel Devaud, the Swiss magistrate who brought charges in 1998 against Zardari and Bhutto, then Pakistanâ€™s prime minister, said the probe should have continued, even if Pakistan was no longer interested in pursuing the case.

Zardari, who now leads one of Pakistanâ€™s largest political parties, is widely expected to succeed Pervez Musharraf as president when the countryâ€™s lawmakers vote Sept. 6.

This week, Geneva prosecutor Daniel Zappelli announced he was dropping any further investigation of Zardari because authorities in Pakistan where the probe began were no longer pursuing the case, which they regarded as unneeded and politically motivated.

Zappelli also said Thursday that Geneva authorities will comply with a separate request from Pakistani officials to unblock some US$60 million in assets that have been frozen in Swiss bank accounts since the 1990s.

The accounts were not part of the Swiss money laundering investigation against Bhutto and Zardari, Zappelli said. He declined to identify the owner of the funds, citing privacy rules. But Hassan Habib, a consular official at the Pakistani Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, said his countryâ€™s government was not the beneficiary of the funds.

Whether the account belonged to â€œthe late prime minister Bhutto, or her husband, or it was a joint account, I am not sure,â€ Habib said.In an interview on Thursday, Devaud disputed Zappelliâ€™s legal argument for dropping the case.

â€œThe money laundering probe in Switzerland could have been continued,â€ Devaud said. â€œPolitely put, it is hard to say there was nothing in the files to indicate corruption.â€

Devaud, whose investigation took five years, found Zardari and Bhutto guilty in absentia in 2003 of laundering millions of Swiss francs (dollars). The verdict was appealed and the investigation reopened after new evidence emerged to challenge earlier findings.

Zappelli said Monday there were no grounds for Switzerland to pursue the case against Zardari since authorities in Pakistan ruled the original charges against him were politically motivated. No further evidence was uncovered by Swiss authorities to warrant an independent money-laundering investigation, he added in his interview with The Associated Press Thursday.

â€œThere is nothing to prove,â€ Zappelli said. â€œThe file we have does not contradict the final position of the general prosecutor of Pakistan.â€

Pakistani judicial officials retracted their request for judicial assistance from Switzerland after then-President Musharraf issued a controversial order last year that largely quashed corruption charges against Bhutto and Zardari.

Zardari, who took charge of Bhuttoâ€™s Pakistan Peoples Party after her assassination on Dec. 27, has since emerged as the front-runner to become the nationâ€™s president.